There is an ever present demand for recycling various materials, such as metals, from scrap and waste items. One recyclable material is aluminum. Recyclable aluminum may be obtained from a number of sources, such as waste aluminum from manufacturing facilities, industrial scrap, used automobile parts such as engine blocks, beverage containers, and the like.
But aluminum presents considerable challenges for recycling since the oxidation (e.g., thermitting) of aluminum is exothermic, which leads to a hotter reclamation process with temperature spikes and to less recovered aluminum. To control thermitting, aluminum recycling processes that melt aluminum have used salt (sometimes referred to as flux). The salts include, for example, potassium chloride (KCl), sodium chloride (NaCl) and/or other salt such as NaF, NaBr, KF and FBr. The use of salt has several drawbacks, including contributing to the amount of waste product (e.g., dross) from the recycling process and increasing the amount of resources used in the recycling process.